Comments on: Where have all my files gone? An appeal

By: poop

poop — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:52:01 +0000

Try Ashisoft Duplicate Finder
http://www.ashisoft.com It will find your duplicate files, show where your disk space is going, and synchronze directories

By: Jeff Drawledge

Jeff Drawledge — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:45:28 +0000

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By: Joan Hakkinen

Joan Hakkinen — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:16:28 +0000

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By: PC Tech

PC Tech — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:59:06 +0000

I’m using particulary “Copernic Desktop Search”, – Nice software. Recommend.

By: JH

JH — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:36:54 +0000

Sorry late, unless file genuine duplicate, will have different date/time, if ono by few mins. Had some work, did it in 2 unsynched places, nightmare trying to find which version was new. Managed it eventually but even then had to check i/case had done something silly. Even then lost some data, but a date based program should do quite well.

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:54:43 +0000

Try Directory Report
http://www.file-utilities.com
It will find your duplicate files, show where your disk space is going, and synchronze directories

By: MartinC

MartinC — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:06:42 +0000

Have you tried Winmerge? Its on the PC Pro coverdisk and will compare folders as well as files, giving you a list of changes ie which files are only on side or the other, dates edited, and if its a plain text file you can see the differences. With binary files such as pictures and video, you’d have to check for the differences manually but you’d get a long way just getting rid of the exact duplicates where the dates match.

By: Mike Russell

Mike Russell — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:06:22 +0000

Hi,
The first response was, I feel, a pretty pragmatic one. However, work is work and if what you have represents any significant amount of it, that you can’t obtain elsewhere, then a sort-out, however unpleasant is what is needed.
I have hundreds of thousands of files, stretching back to the early Eighties. Fortunately, I’ve always been fairly structured.. I bought NoClone, even the Pro edition. It is A: expensive and B: potentially destructive. It falls into the category of duplicate finders that lists duplicate files on lines. This is fine for two, or three hundred files, but you have no overview. I also looked at Araxis Merge, which is what I would say a proper duplicate finder (it also handles internal duplicate section reintegration within documents, plus three way merging), but when you see the price, you might not be quite so impressed. I finally settled on a Swedish program from Pilot Software called “Clone Tools”. It is graphical, displaying tree structures and is byte-by-byte; anything less than a binary comparison is useless. It cost around $40 which is good and there is a free mode, that allows you to try it out. Play with it until you can see what it is doing exactly. If you do have really large numbers of files, then what I did is to simply keep zipping up daughter directories (trying to do it all at once will crash Windoze, or tie it up for so long, you won’t know the difference). I then used Clone Tools to merge the current, non-archive stuff. If I need anything, I can go looking in zips for it (I use Directory Opus 9, instead of the knuckle-dragging Windows Explorer). What I found was even software like CloneTools, or NoClone (I’d guess Araxis would be no better) will take an age to open all those files and compare them. There isn’t really any do-it-all, or set-it-and-forget-it solution to this. As mentioned, it’s a one-time operation, so unless you provide a service, it isn’t worth the expense, or effort to write the software. Oh yes, read NoClone’s policies VERY, VERY carefully before paying them..

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:48:34 +0000

Some cracking suggestions there, folks.

I’ll give them a whirl and let you know what works.

By: Computer repair

Computer repair — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:39:49 +0000

Thanks for this informative blog.Nice one.